


See Me (As I Am)

by AuroraNova



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Aziraphale's ridiculously drawn-out learning curve, Canon Compliant, Crowley's existential angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-10-28 20:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20784497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraNova/pseuds/AuroraNova
Summary: It's not that Crowley doesn't understand. He realizes it's easier for Aziraphale to blame a demon than acknowledge the horrors humans are capable of all on their own. That doesn't mean he has to like it.Or, five times Aziraphale asked if something terrible was Crowley's fault, and one time he didn't.





	1. The First Murder

“I suppose you had something to do with this?”

Part of Crawly resented Aziraphale’s implication. The other, more compassionate part of him understood that it was easier for the angel to blame a demon than acknowledge the horrors of which humans were capable all on their own.

That didn’t mean he liked it, and demons weren’t supposed to be forgiving or sympathetic, so he went with the resentment. Besides, he hadn’t been involved at all. At the time of Abel’s murder Crawly had been asleep.

He’d watched the humans sleep and thought, ‘That might be worth a try. Seems to refresh them, and if nothing else, it’s a good way to make the boring bits pass faster.’

Crawly therefore became the first demon to sleep. If Beelzebub asked, he could always point out that it was most definitely sloth, and therefore he was practicing a sin. Demons were expected to sin regularly now that a formal list had been established, and Crawly was trying out different ones to find his favorite. Sloth was, so far, a real contender. 

Anyway, he’d gotten slightly carried away with his nap. It turned out that demons, unlike humans, didn’t necessarily wake up after some hours had passed, and Crawly slept for a month on his first attempt. This was an extremely promising way to skip the boring bits, just as soon as he worked out a few details like making sure he woke up to do his job. The last thing Crawly wanted was to be recalled to Hell, and he couldn’t coast on tempting Eve forever.[1]

So no, he’d not been party to Cain’s crime. He had been awoken by a strong feeling of hatred, which he followed to the scene of the killing, but he wasn’t about to tell his Adversary that he had in fact slept through the world’s first murder.

“Not my doing,” he said, though he was already thinking he might not want to mention that to Beelzebub. She was very keen on corrupting humans.

“You mean to tell me Cain thought of this all by himself?” asked Aziraphale.

“She created them with potential for good and evil, didn’t She?”

“Well,” said Aziraphale huffily, “yes, but why would Cain do such a thing?”

“He picked evil. Obviously.”

This did not satisfy the angel. “Just because the Almighty preferred Abel’s offering…”

“What?”

Aziraphale looked at him with surprise. “You really don’t know?”

“I was busy elsewhere,” said Crawly.[2]

“She liked Abel’s offering. Cain’s displeased Her.”

Crawly considered this new information and concluded, “She’s at least as much to blame as Cain, then.”

Scandalized, Aziraphale hastened to counter, “No, no. That’s the entire point of this free will business.”

“Sounds like a double standard to me. You want to blame me for influencing them to evil, but when She does it, the evil is all their fault.”

“We’ve discussed this, Crawly. Her plans are ineffable.”

Crawly decided not to point out his painful firsthand knowledge of this fact. You either accepted ineffability, or you had your Grace ripped out and took a freefall into boiling sulphur. He wasn’t yet sure which was more stifling, in the long run.

“Right,” he said. “Well, I’ve got a report to make, so… now what’s this?”

Cain was changing. Into what, Crawly couldn’t say, but it didn’t look Heavenly, so he expected his superiors would be well pleased.

“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale. “This is what the memo meant.”

“What memo?”

Before the angel could reply, Her voice boomed. “Now you are under a curse. You will be a restless wanderer on the Earth all the days of man.”

Cain, shaking, said, “My punishment is more than I can bear.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you killed your brother,” muttered Crawly.

“I will be a restless wanderer on the Earth, and whoever finds me will kill me,” continued Cain.

“Not so,” She said. “For you are no longer Cain. You brought death, and Death you shall become.”

Not going to Hell, then. No, Cain was wasting away from his human body and becoming something new in all the universe. It was a twisted kind of immortality, as She didn’t believe in going lightly when it came to punishments. Crawly would know.

“The memo about the horsepersons,” said Aziraphale. “Didn’t you get one?”

“It’s not like Heaven sends updates Below.”

“I’m sure I read that the Metatron and Lucifer had the broad outline of a Great Plan.”

Crawly realized he had to give some thought to the potential drawbacks of extended sleeping, if this was the kind of news he missed. “Doesn’t mean the rest of us have been clued in. What’s a horseperson?”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” said Aziraphale. “But we’ve just seen the first of them. Death.”

“First of them? How many are there going to be? She’s really stacking the deck against the humans, here.”

“I will not stand by and listen to your blasphemy, Crawly.”

“Fine, fine. I’ve got a report to make, anyway. See you around.” And with that, Crawly descended into Hell.

On the way down, he spared a moment to think about this peculiar angel. Aziraphale was a young one, or so Crawly thought. Loads more interesting than your average angel, and undoubtedly the most compassionate of the lot, but stubbornly unwilling to ask questions. Well, Crawly couldn’t really blame his caution there.

He only hoped that, since it seemed he and Aziraphale would continue to meet for the foreseeable future, the angel would stop asking if every bit of bad news was Crawly’s doing. A demon should want that precise assumption, of course, but Crawly wasn’t a typical demon, and he’d rather not have the reminder of both his eternal role as evil incarnate and his failure to be a proper demon. (It was a personal sore spot for Crawly that he didn’t fit into Hell any better than he had Heaven.)

Besides, Aziraphale needed to open his eyes and accept that God’s favored creations were very, very flawed all on their own. It wasn’t like Crawly had forced Eve to eat that apple. She’d wanted to, was the thing. That was how temptation worked: he urged a human to do what they already wished to, deep down.

He sternly reminded himself that it didn’t matter what an angel thought of him. He had bigger issues, like finding figuring out what this Great Plan was all about. It sounded like the kind of thing he should investigate.

[1] Crawly had not yet realized that he would be able to coast on the evil humans thought up all by themselves, though looking at Eve wailing over her son’s dead body, he started to get an inkling that his job would continue to be easy.

[2] Specifically, curled up in serpent form under a pleasant-smelling bush, dutifully advancing his mastery of sloth.


	2. The Ruins of Akkad

It hadn’t taken Crawly long to suss out that the Great Plan was dictated by the Metatron and/or God, and Lucifer only agreed to make it look like he had more bargaining power than he really did (which was none, when you got down to it). Shortly afterwards, Crawly also realized that for beings of love, angels were suspiciously unworried about demonstrating it to the humans if doing so might interfere with their precious plan.

Aziraphale stuck to the party line wherever possible, but Crawly noticed some fissures in the angel’s composure as Noah was loading up the ark, and they’d never entirely sealed up. The first seeds of doubt had been sown. Crawly wasn’t sure if he should be glad Aziraphale might one day see the truth, or be sorry for what the angel would inevitably lose along the way if he did. He leaned towards the former.

Whatever might come in the future, at present Crawly knew what question was coming next. It was only a matter of moments.

The destruction of Akkad bothered Aziraphale. He ought to have gotten used to this sort of thing by now, seeing how humans had been building and destroying cities for over two thousand years. Crawly and Aziraphale were the only two beings who’d stuck around since the beginning, so they were well acquainted with the cycles of civilization and knew nothing lasted forever.

But Aziraphale had grown attached to Akkad. The clever humans here had come up with real, proper writing all on their own. Aziraphale had been forbidden to share the trick, he’d explained some centuries ago, and curiously, so had Crawly. Not that Crawly much cared about writing. Still, Akkadians had taken the basic pictograms and turned them into something new able to express any idea, and Aziraphale loved them for it.

Now Akkad lay in ruins after a very thorough sacking. The city had been in decline for some time, and they both knew it wouldn’t recover from this final blow. Aziraphale couldn’t even look at Crawly as he asked, “Was this your doing?”

Crawly would have thought that two millennia of running into each other might have taught Aziraphale a thing or two. On the other hand, it wasn’t like he could go around saying, “Actually, wholesale death and destruction aren’t really my interests.” He was a demon, after all. Not an ideologically motivated one, but he still had a reputation to maintain, and he didn’t want word of his deviance getting back to Hell. _That _would ruin him, and his first priority was staying on Earth.

So, all things considered, it was to his professional fortune that Aziraphale continued to stubbornly not recognize humans’ boundless capacity for independent evil.

He still said, “Not my work. War might’ve been by, though.”

Aziraphale sighed. “War only has power because people give it to her.”

Crawly knew. He’d been there when she came into being, and hadn’t that been a lousy week. Beelzebub (this was back when he still reported to her directly) gave him three separate commendations, and he’d earned none of them. He very much doubted it was a coincidence that humans discovered the joys of mead not long after the first war.

“So either way, this is on them,” said Crawly.

Once they’d gotten the issue of culpability out of the way, Aziraphale was happy to commiserate together. He was odd like that. “It was such a lovely city,” he said.

“It was. Great artists.” Crawly had once tried to carve a nice chunk of stone he’d found. It did not go well. In the end he’d smashed the entire project to bits and sworn off future attempts to sculpt, but he did come away from the debacle with a sincere appreciation for artists and artisans.

“And poets,” Aziraphale added mournfully. “Marvelously creative! I do hope these masterpieces are preserved for posterity.”

Crawly had his doubts. Invading armies didn’t care much about preservation, from what he’d seen, and that wasn’t even getting in to simple neglect or the lengths to which desperate people would go when Famine paid a visit. Not wanting to upset the angel further, he kept the thought to himself.

“Must they hurt the innocent?” asked Aziraphale. “You’d think they could come up with some sort of agreement to leave noncombatants out of it.”

“Even Heaven didn’t do that,” said Crawly, speaking once again from personal experience. When war had broken out in Heaven, he’d been off with a small group working on an arm of Andromeda Galaxy. The original condemned noncombatant, that was him.

“I’m sure the Almighty’s reasons are valid.”

“You always are,” said Crawly. “So what’re you here for? Blessing survivors? Standard post-disaster aid and succor?”

“Er.”

Oh, this ought to be good. Aziraphale was obviously not here on orders. No, that was his ‘creatively interpreting my duties to justify doing what I want’ face.

“I’m here for reconnaissance,” admitted the angel at last. “Gabriel wants firsthand observations on the Amorites. Of course it goes without saying that I should comfort the poor Akkadians and encourage the Amorites to be merciful in victory.”

“Of course,” echoed Crawly.

One of these centuries Aziraphale was going to learn sarcasm. It wasn’t this one. “And you?”

In truth, Crawly had been passing time between assignments by inventing an amusing new identity for himself. He’d been in the Indus Valley a few decades before, and it was pretty fun to convince everyone he was a god. A lot easier than anticipated, too, so he thought he’d give it another go. Beelzebub was big on false gods right now, so he didn’t foresee any problems getting approval to head east again.[1]

Anyway, he’d been idly wandering around, thinking up his new persona, when he felt the telltale pressure of divinity nearby and made his way to Akkad hoping it was Aziraphale, who was the only angel worth seeing and incidentally the only one who really cared about humans. Not inclined to admit any of this, he said, “The usual. Lots of opportunities to encourage looting.”

If Aziraphale noted that Crawly’s goal was looting and not, for instance, beheading and raping, he didn’t say so. “I imagine you’re following the army, then.”

“If you can call that mob an army.” It barely merited the name.

“Crawly?”

“Hmm?”

“Other demons, they don’t stay on Earth very long, do they?”

“Nope,” said Crawly. “No more than other angels, from what I’ve seen.”

“I thought that might be the case.”

“When it comes to permanent occult or celestial residents, it’s just you and me.” Aziraphale did not look comfortable with this, so Crawly turned to be on his way. “See you around, angel.”

It was really a shame the other supernatural entity on this planet with him was so dense.

[1] When he got there, he was surprised to find his previous god had morphed into a goddess. You had to give the locals credit for gender equality in their deities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm playing fast and loose with the history here. Akkad was a real city/seat of empire as far as we know (located somewhere in ancient Mesopotamia, probably modern-day Iraq), they did have a complex system of cuneiform, and Amorites really did become a problem for other powers in the region. I've just taken these basics and arranged details to suit my tale.


	3. The Destruction in Judea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, this concept has grown even angstier than anticipated. In this way, it's very much TV Crowley and not Book Crowley.

Blood and death hung in the air. While other demons might think the scent pleasing, Crowley found it utterly depressing. For Satan’s sake, the Romans were going around slaughtering entire villages, kids and all!

Simon bar Kokhba wanted the Romans out of Judea. He’d gotten hundreds of thousands of his people killed and a good number sold into slavery besides. If asked, Crowley could’ve warned that the revolt wasn’t going to end well. Hadrian wasn’t the forgiving type; you didn’t rise to be emperor on an abundance of compassion.

He felt Aziraphale approaching. Crowley could identify this particular angel by presence alone now, after all these years of meetings. Other angels, when they deigned to visit Earth, felt like someone slowly suffocating him on a plane of existence humans couldn’t comprehend. Aziraphale’s divinity was a softer pressure, like being under a pile of warm blankets on a cold night. (It might have been that other angels carried a high risk of discorporation via smiting.)

Crowley had never been brave enough to ask what he felt like to Aziraphale.

The angel looked haggard. He didn’t speak, just stood on the small hill besides Crowley and surveyed the destruction. Several villages were nothing but columns of smoke in the distance.

“These are God’s chosen people, then?” asked Crowley. “Funny way of showing it.”

“She had nothing to do with this,” Aziraphale stated firmly. “None of us did.”

Crowley waited for the inevitable. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Did you?”

There it was. “No. Once again, they did this all on their own.”

“I see,” said Aziraphale.

“Do you?” Crowley doubted it. Forty-one hundred years and the angel still had to ask.

Aziraphale’s hackles were now firmly up. “It’s exactly the kind of business in which Hell revels.”

“Right.”

Hell did, in fact. Crowley didn’t. Four thousand years and he was still just another evil demon to Aziraphale, while humans were poor innocent sheep led astray or whatever metaphor Heaven preferred at the moment.

Crowley thought of the dead toddler he’d seen on the road, and he whirled on Aziraphale. “They’re killing kids. You know I don’t go in for that.” The words came out more accusatory than he meant, but millennia of being misunderstood by the closest thing you had to a friend would do that, Crowley figured.

“No,” agreed Aziraphale. “You don’t.” His next words completely ruined any mollifying effect, however. “Only, sometimes events take a turn we couldn’t have anticipated.”[1]

“Any idiot could’ve anticipated the Romans wouldn’t just let Judea go.”

The thing was, events had conspired to be about as bad for the Judeans as possible. They’d won, for a while. They’d done so much damage an entire legion was disbanded and another nearly followed. Consequently, when the Romans finally got the upper hand, they were furious.

Furious Romans were not merciful.

Crowley just wanted to commiserate with another immortal being who would understand that humans, as a species, would recover, but it still hurt to see so many die. There was one other on this planet who could share perspective and he wouldn’t do it until he’d made sure Crowley wasn’t responsible.

They could mourn together and drink toasts and eat oysters… once Aziraphale had his reassurances after _four blessed millennia_.

Well, if the angel was going to be like that, Crowley didn’t need to commiserate with him. Instead, the demon was hit with an overwhelming urge to be far, far away. Maybe he’d see how the Maya were doing. It’d been centuries since he was over there, and at the moment, anywhere which wasn’t Judea sounded like an improvement.

“I’m off,” said Crowley. “Good luck offering comfort. You’ll have to find someone alive to receive it, first.”

He slipped down into Hell. One quick report later, he’d resurface in Maya lands. As he descended, he saw the shattered look on Aziraphale’s face and wondered if the angel would ever come around.

Humans seemed to think Crowley had been cursed by the Almighty to slither on his belly and eat dust. This was false. He was starting to suspect, though, that he was instead cursed to never fit in anywhere or find someone who understood him, and he thought that might be worse.

[1] Aziraphale was, as later humans would come to call it, projecting. He felt wretched over an intervention in Damascus which had gone horribly wrong (if on a minute scale compared to Judea at the moment), and somehow the fact that Gabriel hadn’t appeared to notice made him feel even worse. Crowley wouldn’t learn this for one thousand, eight hundred and eighty-six years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're witnessing the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, 135 AD. For the historically curious, I have once again taken a liberty with the history in that we aren't sure a Roman legion was disbanded because of heavy losses during this rebellion. It's possible, though, and it suited my story so I went with it. The rest, sadly, is all true.


	4. The Witch Trial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had almost finished a Thirty Years' War chapter when I decided I was doing too much war. So here we have a different kind of cruelty.

Humans were constantly trying to outdo each other and themselves. Usually, Crowley approved. It kept Earth interesting and resulted in all sorts of marvelous ideas such as wine and, more recently, oil painting.[1] Aziraphale, for his part, still hadn’t run out of complimentary exclamations about the printing press.

Sometimes people outdid themselves in ways Crowley simply found depressing. He was supposed to approve of such innovations, but by now he’d accepted that he had significant failings according to demonic standards. So long as Hell never found out, his admiration of humans was his own business.

Nothing to admire here. Just a woman about to be tied to a highly flammable stake.

She was innocent, of course. The pro-burning theory held that people made pacts to let demons use their bodies, and while this was technically possible, it rarely worked like that. For one, demons as a whole weren’t concerned about consent with regards to possession (or really anything). Secondly, possession wasn’t nearly as popular a pastime among demons as humans seemed to think.

In the rare case of actual demonic possession, consensual or otherwise, all it took was a splash of holy water to solve the problem, but Crowley wasn’t about to go around sharing that information. Hell wanted to keep it under wraps for obvious reasons. God had really stacked the deck there. Angels could only be destroyed by Hellfire, to which humans did not have access, while humans could go around making their own holy water. Weak holy water, most of the time, but it got the permanent destruction of a demon job done just fine.[2]

Anyway, witch trials. Crowley couldn’t go around saving all these supposed witches. There were too many for him to protect without attracting Hell’s attention, and miraculous escapes were used as evidence of witchcraft anyway. What he could do was make sure these poor women passed out as soon as the fire was lit. The small mercy of supernaturally-induced unconsciousness was better than nothing.

He felt Aziraphale approaching, as usual. Their arrangement was becoming quite friendly – much friendlier than Hell would’ve liked, had they known about it – and Crowley was almost always happy to see the angel. He suspected this would be one of the exceptions. 

“This is getting out of hand,” murmured Aziraphale. He’d abandoned his fancy London clothes for a simpler merchant’s outfit, in his trademark cream of course.

“Let me guess. Heaven’s fine with it.”

“Not fine with it, per se. Those who lead the witch-burning are destined for Below.”

“I’d noticed,” said Crowley. Hell was very pleased. He’d gotten another commendation for starting this trend. Like most of his commendations, it was unearned; in general his ideas were too subtle for Hell to appreciate.[3]

“I’m not allowed to interfere,” said Aziraphale. Crowley had known him enough millennia to tell the angel was distressed over this suffering, and further concerned that his superiors were not. “Gabriel sent a strongly worded reprimand after I saved an accused witch last month.”

“Right,” said Crowley, faux-sagely. “An angel saving people? What would the world come to?”

“Evidently it’s part of the plan.”

“Plan’s going well, I’d say. Lots of witches burning.”

Aziraphale’s shoulders drooped. “Yes. I try to make it easier on them, the poor things. A sense of peace and tranquility barely counts as a miracle.”

“Peace and tranquility? That’s the best you can do?” It was admittedly more than any other angel deigned to provide, but even Crowley was at least making sure the ‘witches’ passed out.

“Well, what do you suggest? Shall I start drugging them?”

“Might not be a bad idea,” said Crowley.

As they watched the wailing woman dragged out, Aziraphale admitted, “It would be a kindness.”

He got to work on calming the woman down, and it did seem to help. She went quiet and docile. Crowley thought this made it easier for the bystanders to watch, an unfortunate side effect.

“Witchcraft,” he said. “The temperature drops, sheep die, and everyone starts thinking women are conspiring with demons. No minds for science at all.”

“So this isn’t your work?”

“No. It’s not.”

He had to mind the sibilant in his frustration, but he no longer felt like running to a different continent after the question.

What Crowley had realized around 1289 was this: every time Aziraphale looked at him, he saw an example of what could happen if he stepped over the invisible line. Their arrangement was one thing, because it was just being sensible (and he could always say he was trying to redeem Crowley. He couldn’t do that, but the noble gesture would get Aziraphale out of the worst trouble). Questioning, well, _that_ could get an angel a long drop down.

As much as he wanted Aziraphale to open his eyes and see, the thought of him falling made Crowley’s human heart do things he was pretty sure killed people on a regular basis. So he swallowed down his irritation. He ought to be used to his role in the universe by now, right?

“They can be so loving,” said Aziraphale. “And yet so very cruel.”

“Yeah.” Crowley. As soon as the torch hit wood, he encouraged a profusion of smoke and used it as a screen to ease the woman into unconsciousness.

Such a thing was impossible to hide from another supernatural entity standing right beside him. Aziraphale gave him a smile. “That was very…”

“Don’t say it.” Bad enough Crowley was helping humans for no nefarious end. Having an angel call him kind was downright dangerous.

Aziraphale let his eyes speak volumes, but no one in Hell was likely to catch that. And Crowley wondered, for the umpteenth time, how he could be kind and yet still a suspect here.

[1] Yet another art form at which Crowley had no talent. It didn’t help that Aziraphale had come over to discuss business (and then non-business topics, which was more than fine by Crowley) in the middle of the painting experiment. Not wanting to let the angel see, Crowley had banished his painting to the bedroom, but Aziraphale ate half the grapes he’d been using for his still life. It screwed up the whole composition. This could have been avoided if Crowley had been willing to admit he needed the fruit bowl intact, but then he’d have been obliged to say why and… no.

[2] In moderate quantity. A single drop wasn’t fatal, Crowley was relieved to discover some hundred years before, though he thought priests ought to be far more careful with the stuff and now gave holy men wide berth. His thumb had burned for three years. The incident was at least good for convincing other demons they might not want his job.

[3] Possibly because they were only mildly evil, but Crowley was a master of self-denial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical note: European witch trials peaked in the mid 1500s to mid 1600s. Some historians note a correlation between the Little Ice Age's worst years and witchcraft mania, possibly as people were looking for scapegoats when crops failed and livestock died due to poor weather.


	5. The Industrial Revolution

Crowley swung by Aziraphale’s bookshop to discuss Arrangement-related matters. Specifically, he wanted to see if the angel had any work to do in Swansea, since Crowley was heading there anyway and Aziraphale had only just gotten back from Cornwall, where he’d covered a quick temptation. (Aziraphale was almost worryingly good at encouraging gluttony.)

Upon opening the door Crowley sniffed. Admittedly, he didn’t know much about books, but you picked up some details when you hung around the world long enough. “Isn’t that musty smell a bad sign?”

“If it was real, yes,” agreed Aziraphale. “I’ve discovered it turns away the uncommitted shopper.”

“What happened to no frivolous miracles?” He’d nearly lost his head over that issue not two decades before, and if he expected Crowley to rescue him again…

… well, Crowley would if at all possible, but that wasn’t the point.

“Viliel,” replied Aziraphale. “She’s recently been assigned to the eastern half of the Ottoman Empire.”

“I’ve heard of her.” That was an understatement. Viliel made Crowley look extremely good at avoiding angelic thwarting, unintentionally no doubt. Her first reaction to a demon was smiting. Every time. Last Crowley heard, discorporation was up thirty-six percent in her territory and fourteen percent across the planet. Hell concluded, not unreasonably, that Heaven had a new ‘smite first, ask questions later’ policy, so Crowley’s continued existence in his corporation spoke very well of him.[1]

“She’s convinced Gabriel that it’s impossible to determine what is frivolous from Heaven, and the angel on the ground is the only one who can tell if a miracle is required.”

“And Gabriel bought it?”

“She’s not wrong,” said Aziraphale defensively.

“Never said she was.” Though Crowley had his doubts that anyone but Aziraphale would call making the bookshop smell musty a requirement, or indeed claim it advanced Heaven’s agenda in any way.

“Regardless, she’s meant to be there for at least thirty years. Gabriel isn’t keen on finding a replacement for her, so he rescinded the ‘no frivolous miracles’ policy.”

“Good for you.” A wash for Crowley, though. He enjoyed coming to Aziraphale’s rescue far more than he ought. Demons, after all, were not supposed to enjoy doing good at all, never mind helping their immortal enemies. Though he took pains to hide it, Crowley was a better demon on paper than in actuality.

“Crowley.” That was Aziraphale’s serious voice.

“Yes?”

“I’ve read some truly disturbing news reports lately.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

There was a lot to find upsetting, if you were on the (alleged) side of good. When you got down to it, this was the case throughout most of history, and most of it was the humans’ own doing. Very creative in their sins. Crowley had it on excellent authority (Aziraphale and several gleeful _Infernal Times_ columns) that holy matrimony was not license for a man to rape his wife at will.

“About the children in factories,” elaborated Aziraphale.

Oh. That. “Nasty business,” agreed Crowley, who had paid some visits a few years back and was so repulsed by what he saw, he never claimed any credit.

“Quite. I went to a textile factory this morning to see for myself. The owner thought he was giving an investor a tour.”

Behind his glasses, Crowley winced. He’d gotten spectacularly drunk after his own excursion, and here Aziraphale was stone-cold sober.

“It’s appalling,” continued the angel. “What are their parents thinking?”

“Probably that food isn’t magically appearing on the table.”[2]

“But the children barely earn a wage at all! And they’re in such danger all the time. If I hadn’t intervened, a boy surely would’ve lost his arm in front of us, and the owner didn’t care in the least. They’re ever so young, you know, and working all hours of the day and night under such dreadful conditions for less than a pittance. Goodness, some of them looked half-dead.” By now Aziraphale had worked himself up into a righteous rage. “As I stood before the owner, I cannot tell you the last time I was so tempted to smite a human.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’m not allowed,” the angel said in his unique mixture of pained and defensive. “I am drafting a report. It’s been some time since we had a prophet. Barring that, we could encourage the reform movement.”

If Gabriel signed off on that, Crowley would wear unfashionable clothes for a year. No, three. “Does it help at all that the innocent children who die go to Heaven?”

“Not particularly,” said Aziraphale.

“That my side is getting most of the factory owners?”

“Only slightly.”

Crowley had tried. Comfort wasn’t his strong suit. Not exactly part of a demon’s job description, comfort.

“Is this… are you at all involved in the practice?”

“No,” spat Crowley. “You know I don’t go for hurting kids.” Had known since the Flood, for Satan’s sake.

“Yes, well,” began Aziraphale.

Well nothing. The angel could go to Swansea himself if he had work to do. “Places to go, people to tempt,” said Crowley, who in fact had nothing at all planned for the rest of the day or the following one either. He might see about getting chamber pots dumped on some important heads, just to work out his frustrations. “See you around, angel.”

“I believe there’s been a misunderstanding… Crowley…”

He was out the door and headed down the street before Aziraphale could say another word. When they met up again, five months later, neither of them mentioned the incident.

[1] Two centuries later, Aziraphale would admit that smiting demons came back into fashion at the time. He’d smote some other demon once in Amsterdam, which kept Gabriel off his case, and went right back to not smiting Crowley.

[2] If a rich cheesemonger’s cart broke and spilled cheese all over a tenement neighborhood after Crowley’s visit to the factories, that was encouraging theft. Very demonic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale will 100% smite other demons with extreme prejudice. He just doesn't care to smite Crowley. Who would he feed ducks and reminisce with while Crowley was waiting for a new body?
> 
> The +1 is mostly written and will be up soon.


	6. After the World Didn't End

Aziraphale was going to ask a question soon.

Not just any question, either. It was obvious in the particular way he fidgeted, the way his eyes kept flitting to Crowley’s tattoo and then back to the wine bottle. He was preparing himself to ask something significant and was not at all sure of Crowley’s response.

Crowley had an uncomfortable feeling he knew what the question would be. The previous evening a terrorist had blown up a bus in Piccadilly Circus. Absolutely nasty business. Aziraphale hadn’t asked if Crowley was responsible for an atrocity since the invention of mustard gas, so Crowley had thought maybe the angel finally, _finally _got the picture. Apparently not.

He drained another glass of wine – no point in facing this sober – and decided to get it over with. “Go on, then. Out with the question.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Like a neon sign.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. He twisted his own glass in his hands. “Well, then. I’ve decided to take a holiday.”

“A holiday,” echoed Crowley, waiting for… what was the phrase? The other shoe to drop, that was it.[1]

“Yes. Since there’s still a world, I thought it might be nice to see more of it. I’ve never been to Tasmania.”

Crowley struggled to wrap his mind around this conversation. It could’ve been the wine. “The whole world and you’re starting with Tasmania?”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” said Aziraphale testily. “Oh, that wasn’t at all how I meant to ask.”

Crowley let his glasses slip down enough that he could peer over them. “You’re inviting me on your holiday?”

“Yes. It’s not as though we have to worry about how it will look anymore. Have you ever been to Fiji?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to be quite lovely. And of course I haven’t visited Greece in centuries, so we must spend some time there. Presuming you’re joining me, that is.”

“I could be convinced.” It wasn’t like Crowley had anything better to do. They were both freelancers now, although Aziraphale was significantly more interested in spreading peace and goodwill than Crowley was sin and despair.

Aziraphale wiggled happily. “Excellent! Let me get pen and paper and we can start a list.”

Crowley was just drunk enough to say, “Not going to ask about the exploding bus?” and not so drunk he didn’t immediately regret the words.

“What’s there to ask?”

Crowley just stared.

“Oh, dear. This is important, isn’t it?” asked Aziraphale, abandoning his pen search to give Crowley his full attention.

Crowley hadn’t planned to ever speak of this, but six thousand years was a long time to repress anything, never mind resentment that your only friend thought you were evil, and the words spilled out. “Not going to ask if I was behind it?” he said bitterly.

“Of course you aren’t. You’re not wicked, my dear fellow. Though I heard something about graffiti on a certain MP’s residence which refuses to come off, and I rather suspect you had a hand in that. You may not be evil, but you are mischievous.”

The MP in question absolutely deserved the graffiti, and Crowley would let it wash off. Eventually. Maybe sooner than planned, because he was suddenly in a buoyant mood.

After six thousand and twenty-three years, Aziraphale understood him. Crowley was so overcome with emotions he shoved his glasses back in place before the eyes gave too much away.

“Let’s sober up, please,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley complied. Some conversations were best held without two bottles of wine in him.

Aziraphale wrung his hands for a moment before he spoke. “I owe you an apology. I spent far too long believing that you must be inherently evil, at least a little bit. But Crowley, for what it’s worth, the last few times I asked if you were behind some dreadful event, I didn’t think you wanted to be.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense! Just because you had orders didn’t mean you wanted to follow them.”

Crowley stared. “You were asking if I was _ordered_ to create mustard gas?”

“It seemed reasonable at the time.”

“You’re the one who followed orders you didn’t like. I found creative ways around them. And there is no one in Hell with the imagination to create mustard gas.”

“I don’t see how I could have been expected to know that,” said Aziraphale defensively. He wasn’t very good at this apologizing business, a failing Crowley attributed to lack of practice. After a moment of weighty silence, he sighed and tried again. “Do you remember our falling out about children working in factories?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought it best not to bring up when you came round again, but I’d thought, perhaps you were told to encourage the practice, or if you were taking any credit in your reports, then I could have framed my own involvement as thwarting.”

Crowley let that sink in. “You didn’t think I wanted those kids to be worked to death.”

“Of course not.” Aziraphale deflated, looking down at his hands. “I suppose after all this time I owe you further explanation, as well.”

“I already know it.”

Crowley had known since the beginning. Aziraphale had to believe that he was evil, because if demons weren’t inherently wicked, what else might not be true? Heaven might not even be good, under that logic. Everything Aziraphale thought and worked for rested on this simple foundational premise: a demon is, by definition, evil.

Aziraphale hadn’t been brave enough to question, and as much as Crowley didn’t like it, he’d always understood. Dangerous things, questions. Best not to ask if you’re not prepared to deal with the consequences.

“You do?”

“Demon, evil, sides, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “That about sums it up. Though you did always insist upon being seen as evil. Rather forcefully, I may add.”

“Consequences of an undemonic reputation included being recalled, and that was best case scenario.”

“Ah. Well, seeing as how we’re on our side now, I can freely admit I think the worst you’ve gotten up to lately has been making graffiti stick.”

“Trolled some men’s rights activists online,” added Crowley. “Absolute fountains of wrath, that lot.”

Aziraphale must’ve read about them in the _Times_, which he did occasionally peruse for more than the crossword, because he didn’t look even a little concerned about Crowley taunting them. Instead, he gave Crowley his Quite Serious Look. “You are my dearest friend, and I should very much like the opportunity to spend time together without pretending otherwise.”

As apologies for six millennia went, it was a bit anticlimactic. Crowley was fine with that. Aziraphale finally _saw_. Saw Crowley, saw Heaven and Hell for two sides of the same coin, saw that he and Crowley were on this planet together, just them and the humans.

Crowley, who never had learned how to handle overwhelming positive emotions, only managed to say, “Yeah, alright. We can go to Tasmania, but I want to see some of those devils.”

Aziraphale clapped his hands in delight. “I have travel books!”

Of course Aziraphale had travel books. He probably had one for every country on the planet, because he didn’t go in for half measures when something captured his attention.

“You must tell me where you’d like to go,” continued the angel while fetching a small (for him) stack of books.

Crowley would go anywhere Aziraphale wanted. Not about to admit such a thing, he instead said, “I’ve been meaning to get to Las Vegas.”

To his credit, Aziraphale didn’t refuse. “I suppose I could occupy myself encouraging people to go home before they gamble away their life savings.”

“I was thinking I could give the house their worst night ever.” That was a good evening’s entertainment in Crowley’s mind.

Aziraphale sat down on the couch and selected a book. It took him a minute to look through the pages he’d marked before he handed the travel guide over. “I thought you might enjoy the flora here.”

Crowley checked the book’s cover. “So this is Fiji. Not bad.” Lush plant life, lots of beaches for sunbathing – a demon could get very comfortable there. Not least of all because this wasn’t Aziraphale’s scene and he’d chosen it anyway specifically for Crowley. 

“And while we’re in Australia we must take a wine tour,” continued Aziraphale.

This was shaping up to be a very long holiday. Crowley figured they’d earned it and then some, what averting the apocalypse and all. Okay, if you wanted to get technical, the (former?) Antichrist and the humans did most of the work, but Crowley and Aziraphale offered moral support at a key moment and for their trouble would’ve been executed, so all things considered, a nice leisurely trip around the world was well deserved.

He got an extended holiday with his best friend and no more assumptions that he was, at heart, truly evil. The future looked promising. He snapped his fingers to let the graffiti be washed off next time someone tried, and settled in to add to Aziraphale’s list of destinations.

“Haven’t been to Kiev in centuries.”

“Me neither.” Aziraphale wrote it down. “Oh, and Prague.”

Hell never had appreciated this friendship business, but Crowley had figured it out a long time ago. Worthwhile, once you got past the awkward “you’re a demon” stage. The humans were really on to something here. 

Hell be blessed. With the millennia-old metaphorical weight of Aziraphale’s assumptions gone, Crowley finally had everything he wanted on Earth.

[1] Crowley liked to tease Aziraphale about his failure to keep up with modern parlance, but the truth was, after six thousand years and more languages than he could keep track of, Crowley missed his fair share of new idioms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap! Thanks for reading, and if you're inclined to leave a comment, they always make me very happy. =)


End file.
